The Reasons Rural Residents and Businesses Struggle to Get Fiber Broadband

Many rural residents and businesses are furious that they can’t get fiber broadband even though there is fiber close to their home or business. They can’t understand why the uncaring company that owns the fiber can’t make the tiny investment needed to connect them to fiber that’s already tantalizingly close to them. The fiber that runs close to the home and business is likely middle-mile fiber. These middle-mile routes are often seen as too valuable by telecom companies to serve last-mile customers. Carriers are also usually reluctant to break into shorter transport fiber routes, like fiber between two neighboring communities. But the main reason carriers don’t break into existing middle-mile fiber routes is economic; there is often no reasonable business case for serving just a few customers off an existing fiber. On top of all this, state legislators have typically made sure that fiber built with state funding can’t be used for commercial purposes. This is obviously done at the prodding of big ISP lobbyists. State-funded fibers don’t just come close to rural households – the fibers often run through towns and cities, often deep into residential neighborhoods to reach schools, firehouses, and other government buildings. In these kinds of cases, it would be economically feasible to use such fiber as the launch point for last-mile fiber.

[Doug Dawson is President of CCG Consulting.]